#98: Deep Canvassing with Dave Fleischer

[Music] The other day, my doorbell rang and my heart sank. I've got a ring doorbell so I can check to see if maybe the gods have graced me with a drop-and-run FedEx carrier. But no, it's a guy wearing a polo shirt with some logo on it. And the thing is the front door was open with the screen door locked and the garage door was open, so I'll like, I'm obviously home. So I have to go answer the door and I do ensure enough it's another pest control company throwing shade about some spider web they noticed somewhere on my house. I swear, I've talked like 10 of these people from different companies. And really what all of this is about is that I resent when strangers rang my doorbell and want to talk to me. And I feel for these people, they're perfectly pleasant, but they've got to get people to buy what they're selling. There's this great old documentary from the 60s called Salesman by the Macyl's Brothers. It was the first or at least one of the first nonfiction feature films. And they followed around these door-to-door Bible salesmen as they just have a miserable time trying to get people to buy expensive Bibles. But, but maybe there's a way to do it well. Political scientists have been interested in whether canvassing is effective, literally going up to people and talking with them about an upcoming election. One-on-one. And overall, it's hard to say whether canvassing is a form of messaging that works because there are so many ways you could do it. But one thing it has going for it is that it allows for a human connection that no billboard or TV commercial could pull off even if the voter resents having their doorbell rang. And so how can we use that human connection to really, truly get through to people? And what might we learn about the conversations we have with each other every day in the process? You're listening to Opinion Science, the show about our opinions where they come from and how we talk about them. I'm Andy LaTrell. And this week I'm excited to share my conversation with Dave Fleischer. He led the team that pioneered a new form of persuasion called Deep Canvassing. The idea is that rather than knocking on a door, giving a 60-second scripted pitch and asking for the person's commitment to vote, you have a deeper conversation with the person, giving them space to honestly express themselves without judgment, listening to them. When it's been tested very carefully, the evidence shows that Deep Canvassing works. People actually change their minds over the course of a relatively brief conversation with a stranger who approached them cold. As a quick shout out, the political scientists David Brookman and Josh Kela have done some incredible work testing just how effective Deep Canvassing is and why. But today, Dave Fleischer shares his background in political campaigning and how it led to Deep Canvassing. Then we'll hear a recording of an actual Deep Canvassing interaction as David helps break down what's happening and how it's working. Oh, also, one tiny bit of context that'll help when we get rolling is that Dave is from a town called Chila Coffee, which is in Ohio, not all that far from where I am. We were talking about it a little before the recording got rolling, so he'll refer to Chila Coffee as though you know exactly where it is. Don't worry if you don't. Okay, let's get into my conversation with Dave Fleischer. When we talked earlier, this was a little while ago, you had mentioned something about how like you were origin story or like you got into political advocacy or social advocacy pretty young. Is that right? Is that, am I remembering that right? Is this part of the story? Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I was following politics when I was six and seven. My dad, my earliest memory of doing something with my dad is running off a flyer for a school levy in Chila Coffee. And I can say that to you without having to explain what a school levy is, a vote on whether we're going to pay for public schools and with property taxes. And the, yeah, I still remember the itted failed. The levy had failed in November. The Chila Coffee schools were potentially going to have to close. And so the school board put it on the ballot for a special election in December. And I still remember the flyer, my dad drew by hand picture of Santa Claus with a bag over his shoulder and in the bag, it said, give your children the Christmas gift they really need, vote yes on the school levy. We were the only George family in town. But my dad realized this would be a way to communicate. And I remember running these off at his office. And my dad and I talked politics for fun from when when he when I was six and he was 36 all the way till he died at 95. So, yeah, I got a lot of encouragement for being interested in this. Well, do you know for him what it was? Like, does this how deep does it go for him was just like as a kid when he was six. He was also thinking about politics. No. And in fact, my dad, but my dad was very motivated to help with civic and public health matters. My dad and his and the doctor he partnered with Lowell Smith, they when they moved to Chilacothe. They became the first pediatricians Chilacothe ever had. They were much younger than most of the existing doctors. And honestly, they had been chief residents at Children's Hospital in Columbus. And what they saw repeatedly was little babies arriving with brain damage because they didn't get adequate care in Chilacothe. So they actually knew there was a need for better better early medical intervention for kids when they had difficulty. So they wanted to practice medicine in a small town where they were really needed. And that's what they went and did. And my dad practiced from age 30 until he was 85 full time. So he loved practicing medicine. But he also, I would say he and a cohort of younger doctors that came to Chilacothe around the same time really viewed everybody in Ross County as somebody they were going to care about. And so although he never would have called a politics, I would call it politics. So if we trace the story from run-and-off flyers in your dad's office at six, to continuing to do this kind of work as an adult, like what did what did your sort of more young adults years look like when in terms of like participating in these sorts of things? The first time I went to or canvassing was for Howard Metz and Baum when he beat John Glenn in the Democratic primary for U.S. Senate and I was 15 years old. I helped out with the local Democratic party when one of my very favorite high school teachers ran as a musky delegate. And our next door neighbor was the chair of the local Democratic party, Bob Badgley, a great guy. So even people who had different political views than me, I was really interested in them. So in 1964 when Goldwater came to campaign in Chilacothe on a whistle stop and Mr. Perry, the father of my friend Bob Perry, and the only one in the neighborhood who was out about the fact that he intended to vote for Goldwater. He took us all down to hear Goldwater speak, which I thought was great. It was just fascinating. So in lots of different ways, but the other thing that I was very aware of in Chilacothe was prejudice and really not directed against me. You know, I was the first Jew that a lot of people ever met, but the truth is although people had lots of questions and curiosity, there was very little if any, unkindness. But I live in I grew up in a neighborhood called Storyplace and just up Woodbridge Hill was if you followed it five minutes, you get to this part where it continues uphill and it was unpaved. And the people's homes were constructed of very non-durable materials. They had added onto their homes with large cardboard boxes like refrigerator boxes. And what that neighborhood was called, right? I lived in Storyplace, but this neighborhood was called White Heaven. Everybody living there was born. black and it wasn't heaven. And the cruelty in that I remember the first time I ever walked all the way up and saw that a lot of people weren't getting a good shake and these were the black kids who were in school with me, some of them. So yeah, so in a variety of different ways, politics seemed really relevant to me. And the idea of canvasing there, this idea of just like walking up to people, that was something, as you said, you were doing pretty young, who's that sort of a hallmark of like what it seemed like you needed to do to get the word out and change minds. Well, you've probably tried to change people's minds before right Andy. I don't know how often, but I'm sure I have, yeah. Yeah. And your batting average might be very mixed. And certainly that was true for me, but I really wanted to learn how to change people's minds. I mean, the questions that interests me now were really on my mind when I was six, which was, how do we reduce people's dependence on stereotypical thinking? How do we help people not make assumptions before they've even talked to a person? How do we help people be more curious about the person right in front of them? So these were the things that worried me and bothered me. And it was clear to me that changing people's minds was a hard thing to do. But it did seem to me even very early on that that seeing people face to face gave you a better chance to both understand them and possibly help them reconsider. Yeah, it seems, it seems like there's a difference between running off flyers where everybody gets the same message and actually having that one on one contact. And so it just seems like it seems like you were drawn to that approach early. Yeah. And also the one huge advantage of growing up in a small town is you really don't have the luxury of writing off people who aren't the same as you. You've got to be grateful for people who are wonderful, even if you disagree about some stuff, because otherwise you're going to be a very lonely person in that small town. And so I think that was probably on my mind too, because when you talk to people face to face, it's easier to help them be their best self. Very few people are really cruel face to face. So if we fast forward a little bit, speaking of the challenge, even if there's a, uh, and a lure of having these kinds of one on one conversations, as you said, it's not some sort of like magic pill that's going to make everybody change immediately. And so I wonder if you could reflect a little bit on your experience campaigning against prop 8 in California and sort of what that highlighted for you as the promise and limitations of these kinds of interactions. Well, I wasn't in California for probably. I was spending half my time in Ohio in three cities helping increase voter turnout in 2008, particularly in financially disadvantaged communities in Columbus, Dayton and Lorraine. And then the other half of my time, I was in Florida, uh, tried to help a local group there defeat the same kind of ballot measure and anti gay marriage ballot measure that prop 8 was, but I had friends helping out with prop 8 and, uh, mostly they expressed great confidence because the public polling showed we were going to win easily. Uh, and you think of California is a very liberal place. So then, uh, everybody, including me was really shocked by the loss. I, I, I was probably less shocked because I had already by that point spent over 10 years of my life fighting anti LGBT ballot measures. So I was aware that a lot of voters are vulnerable to an appeal to prejudice, but it was after we lost on prop 8 and it was, and I could tell folks in LA and elsewhere around the state, didn't know what to do. They were just so hurt, uh, as well as angry. And I was talking to my friend, uh, Darryl Cummings, who's that was the number two at the Los Angeles LGBT Center. I said, Darryl, why are you guys marching on a Mormon temple, which was the big activity that they had taken up? Uh, I said, I don't think that's actually going to solve your problem. And, uh, he said, Dave, nobody knows what to do. Uh, if you would come out here and visit with people that would be great. And so in December of 2008, I went out, spent a couple weeks in LA, met with a bunch of people. Darryl was completely right. Nobody had a clear idea of a path forward. And I had a couple of ideas that, uh, occurred to me just as I was talking with everybody, but I had no way of knowing if my ideas were any good because, uh, uh, both of them, uh, had never occurred to me previously and all the years of doing political work. So, uh, that's, that was the beginning of me letting Darryl know. I think we could do something. And I, it's just a hunch that it might work. What were the two things that occurred to you? The one and the idea that really led to the development of deep canvassing was it was really clear that the public polling had done a terrible job, uh, letting us know what people thought and our own intuitions that people were automatically with us were misjudgments. And so I said, since there's so much we don't know that we thought we knew, maybe what we ought to do is go back to the people who voted against us and ask them why they did that. And I had no idea if those people would be willing to talk with us, uh, or how, how comfortable our people would be initiating those conversations. Uh, we then ended up having a meeting of about a hundred of the organizers and volunteers in LA on, uh, on our side on probate. And as we talked as a group, this idea was the one that really excited the group. And, uh, and so that's what we went forward with. And we actually spent the rest of the meeting after we had decided to do that. Brain storming, everything anybody thought might change the minds of these voters. And we ended up with a list. Uh, I, I'm pretty sure it was more than a hundred ideas. And, uh, we made a commitment to each other that we would try them one by one and discover, uh, which, if any of these would work. And so that's what began us canvassing on Valentine's Day of, uh, 2009. And, and so I don't know, maybe it's worth just skipping to the punchline and, uh, getting a sense of like what the, yeah, I can give you as much. Yes. If you, if you want detail, uh, I could give you voluminous detail. But yeah, I'm glad to cut to the chase. Uh, so, uh, go ahead and ask me whatever you would like. Uh, you, you're good. I do like this story. I worry that this story, we could go down a lot of rabbit holes with what didn't work. And so if, if our interest is sharing like, okay, like what does seem to work? If you were to sort of distill it down, like if you were going to train me, I come up to, you meet me on an airplane and we've got five minutes and I go like, oh, you know how to change minds? What do I do? What do I do to get through to people, um, who I'd like to encourage to think differently? Yeah. If I was only going to tell you one thing, it would be we have to go meet the people who don't agree with us and treat them with the same respect, uh, and kindness that we would treat a good friend. And the reason I'd put it that way is you already know how to treat a good friend, right? Andy, I don't know you very well, but I bet you have friends and and I bet I bet you're not an asshole with them. Uh, I appreciate that. I appreciate your photo confidence. Well, and this is true for every everybody. We really do know how to treat people right. And when we are our best self, right? That's what we do. But when we treat people with less respect than that, we actually learn very little. We have a lot of difficulty hearing what really matters most to them. So we've got a reorient the way we approach a conversation with the stranger. If we want to connect with them, understand them. And those are the correct wizards for being able to potentially help them change their mind. Yeah, it strikes me that maybe the way people often treat persuasion is inherently objectifying of the person they're trying to reach. I'm just trying to turn you the right color so that like I can win the game. And that is like as to humanizing as it can be, where you just go like, well, I don't really care who you are, where you come from. I just need you to think to think that I think, um, whereas this seems to be the polar opposite of that. And I've seen you write about this elsewhere as a connection first mindset, right? Like politics doesn't always feel that way. But connection first is the way to go. Yeah. And I think some of this comes from popular culture depictions of what persuasion looks like, whether you grew up on Perry Mason or on suits, right? Or any of the law programs in between. Somebody says something that's wrong. The good guy slaps them with a fact and they crumple. I have never had that experience in real life. It just actually isn't how people change their minds. So what's a little more helpful is for people to put aside a lot of the depictions of changing somebody's mind. But instead ask themselves the question, when did I last change my mind about something that was important to me? And because if I think back, right, I'm not changing my mind every day of that big thing. But I have changed my mind about some very important things to me. And when I think about why I changed my mind and what helped me change my mind, it never was somebody demeaning me, correcting me in a condescending way. I mean, you know this from classes you teach, I'm sure. If you're a good teacher, what you really want is to help somebody think it through because what they're really going to remember are the words that come out of their own mouth. I think about this a lot these days, I have a three-year-old and every day is the like, okay, how do I make sure you're a decent person in the world? And I can't make you do that because if I make you, that's not that's not the point. So there is a lot of that like, how do I guide you to a conclusion about like the nice thing to do in this moment? And then when and then it's your choice to do it. But you know, I can't at a certain level, yeah, like you three, like I got to tell you some things like you have to say thank you. I'm going to say you have to say thank you. But beyond that, the conversations my wife and I have all the time is just like, we just kind of have to model being decent and that's that's the way. Yeah, and all I can tell you is that was my experience too. The person who taught me the most about how to be a good person was my dad. And he never gave me a lecture on here I'm being a good person. Never, never did anything remotely like that. But I got to see it again and again when I went with him to the office and I saw how he treated patients. I mean, one of my memories from like high school, my dad got a call late at night. I think it woke him up. Woman had a baby who was really sick. And as she described the symptoms and what was going on, my dad could tell that there was an injection that he could give the kid that would help put the kid in a better position to recover quickly. So he said, you know, I'm willing to go into the office if you want to come in right now and bring your child in. And she said, fine. And I was up, I guess overhearing dad. And so I went in with him to the office and normally what he would do is ask the mother to hold the child while he gave the injection. But it turned out when we got there, the mother was much more upset than the child was. She was crying. She was really upset. She was shaking. And so my dad said to her, could you please give your child to David, right, who will hold the child. And you come close. So you're also touching the child. And my dad is there injecting and at the same time, patting the mom on the back and letting her know it's really going to go okay, I'll just never forget it because he didn't he didn't need to do that except to be a really good doctor. That's what you have to do is not just be interested in one of the two people in front of you, but in both of them. And so I got to see this again and again. So your son, son, what's his name? My daughter Maya daughter Maya cool. Yeah. So 30 years from now, Andy, you'll see which of the things you've modeled have stuck and it's probably not predictable. But I was very, very lucky to have somebody take the approach that you're trying to take with Maya. So in terms of the this, so here's what I wonder is that this is all premised on the idea of connection first and hearing each other out going and actually having genuine conversations with people, even when you disagree, is the ultimate goal though still persuasion? Would you say like ultimately all of this is in service of a persuasive end? Or would you go that's missing the point? No, I no question. The goal is persuasion. But persuasion is consensual. It's like when you're on a date and you're a teenager, maybe the goal for you is sex. But is there going to be that kind of a connection? Actually, it really depends on both of you deciding that's what you want to do or that certainly that's where it should be. And so I think persuasion isn't something we do to someone else. It's something we co-create with them. And by the way, that means persuasion might not all happen today. This might be the first experience that's going to help somebody change their mind over time. But a lot of changing the mind over time is hard to track. So the thing that's interesting about deep canvassing is we've succeeded well enough that in an average of 15 minutes, we're able to help a much larger number of people reconsider even really big things like their prejudice against transgender people. Or even though they haven't voted in the last three presidential elections, are they motivated to vote this time as they think about the stakes for them? So it seems effective, right? Like persuasion can happen, but it's less about loving the exact perfect argument at people. And instead we're just creating a space where change can happen. Is that how you'd characterize it? Well, certainly telling and finger pointing and finger wagging, you know, it's just a self-indulgent ineffective approach. So yes, what we found when we were measured in a randomized control trial by David Brockman and Josh Cala, right, was we were able to change the minds of about one in ten of the people we talked with, not only in a big way, but in an enduring way, where as they measured and followed up over a nine month period, people not only changed their mind, but their mind stayed changed as though the change was for good. And the reason that's important is there a lot of things that we can do that we hope will persuade people that might seem like they're having an impact right now. Often we overestimate that. But even when we get it right, they tend to revert back to what they thought previously. So that's what makes Deep Canvassing so different. TV ads, for instance, in a political campaign, sometimes have a big impact. But it is an evanescent impact. Two or three days later studies show most of the persuasion impact often all of it has dissipated. And so this is why when a campaign puts an ad up on the air, they can't just take it down as though they've changed minds from it. They have to keep running the same damn thing all the way to the end, sickening all of us, but having whatever persuasive impact that kind of communication can have. The nice thing about Deep Canvassing is I don't actually have to go back to the person's home every three days to change their mind again. If they decide to reconsider, they've changed. And that means if we want to have more people voting, right, there's this cumulative impact if we Deep Canvass year after year, because the people who we've persuaded to connect the dots between voting and their own life and the lives of people they love, they're on their path to becoming chronic voters instead of being non-voters. I seems like the prop 8 stories. I'll get an example of that too. When you've written about this, you highlight this advertisement that seemed to do a bunch of heavy lifting in terms of stoking support for prop 8. But it was an ad that had to run constantly. And the nice thing about this is it's a gentler kinder way of showcasing an attitude that might, you know, I would say that stoking an attitude that is more generous, more positive, right, that like this was prop 8 was about same-sex marriage, right? So this is about encouraging people to support same-sex marriage. But in a way that's just like kinder and more personal, then this kind of gross quick televised advertisements. Yeah, I mean, really what we're trying to do is we have conversations on a regular basis where we, with people we care about, where we're our best self. And really, we're just trying to bring that. Even when we're talking with strangers and when we're talking about politics, most people's idea of what it would mean to talk about politics with somebody to disagree with is there's going to be a big argument. And in fact, I remember you asking me, first time we talk, when we approach voters who we disagree with, you wondered if they would be annoyed that we've shown up. And we certainly could annoy them. That's an easy accomplishment. All you have to do to annoy them is to be a jerk, right? You're there to correct them. But if you're really there because you want to know how they see things and you're going to treat them with radical, unconditional respect, actually, you don't have an argument. And it's not hard. And they're not annoyed that we're there. Whether or not they change their mind, people know how rare it is for somebody to listen to them. And we're willing to do that first and throughout. Well, maybe to showcase how this can happen and not be annoying, we can look at an example that you sent. I'm going to load it up here. You sent an example. This is a video clip. So can you set the stage? What is it that we're about to listen to? Yeah. So the canvasser here, their name is Virginia. They use they in them pronouns. And Virginia has knocked on a door in a neighborhood, right? We're deep canvassing a neighborhood where overwhelmingly we had lost on past anti-gay ballot measures. And the local group in Miami that we were partnering with, Saved Aid, they a great group. They were anticipating that they might well face an anti-transgender ballot measure. So our goal was to find people who are prejudiced against LGBT people and see if we could reduce their prejudice. And since the vote was specifically going to be on, should we include transgender people in the non-discrimination law? Or should we not include them? Right? We wanted more people to start to realize that they actually wanted to vote with us to include transgender people in the protection of the law. So Virginia knocks, a guy answers, Virginia introduces themselves and the videographer and gets consent to video asks on a scale of 0 to 10, where 0 means you definitely don't want to include transgender people in the law. And 10 means you definitely do want to include them. And in the middle, you have mixed feelings. The voter in a very tentative voice gave himself a 10. And then Virginia showed him a one-minute compilation of video clips showing both sides, arguing for and against this matter. And it includes showing transgender people. So it removed any possibility of someone not quite knowing who are transgender people. And at the end of that, Virginia said going back to that rating scale on a 0 to 10, it sounds like, and this is where the video picks up. It sounds like you're not a 10 anymore. And he goes on to rate himself as a five now. And so that's what's happened prior to this video picking up. And the first chunk of the conversation you're going to play is really the first minute. So yeah, why don't you play that that first chunk? Hey, it's me. We're about to hear some clips from this conversation between a canvasser and the person whose house they went to. The audio is not incredible. They were truly standing on a stoop outside as cars were going by. I tried to clean things up as best I could. And it is way better, but it's still not pristine studio quality sound. But the raw recording I think is still important to share. The man's English isn't perfect, who's is. And he can sometimes be a little hard to hear. But to hear him express himself in his own voice also seems like important context. Anyhow, hopefully between the recording and Dave's in my discussion of it, you'll make out everything you need to know. But this is just my quick plea to bear with us. And a quick heads up that an epithet referring to gay people is used a few times. I just wanted you to be aware. Okay, let's hear the recording. You're not 100% in favor. It sounds like you kind of moving away from the 10 where number feels right for you. A five. Okay. And so it sounds like that. You started you moved to a five because of the bathroom situation. That's right. The bathrooms. It is one thing that disturbed me. I don't know if they say yeah, a man that is using his man clothing, he goes into a lazy's room. That I don't like. Where does that come from? I'm feeling understanding. Because I'm from South America. And South America we don't like that. Oh, okay. Absolutely. Is that what you refer to as like transgender or all gay people or we we we whatever you are or whatever you got made you and people that being like done not try to be a country said out to do something else? What strikes you listening to that Andy? I think that openness with which the person at the door, the person who lives there is expressing this idea. Yeah, it does seem like he has this sense that like okay, like if you want to know, I'm just going to kind of talk candidly about where I'm coming from. Right. The voter is being very candid. And I think the reason why is that Virginia. Kenya has brought to this conversation already, very consistent kindness and a willingness to listen to him. And by showing the video with both sides, it really telegraphs that we're not there to judge them or shame them. We're aware that there's more than one way to look at this issue, even though we have a point of view that is very decidedly on one side of that divide. Yeah, what did you, if you had been in Virginia's place, how would you be feeling if a voter was saying to you what he had to say? I have to imagine that it would be pretty quick to try to push back, not in like an argumentative way, but to be like, well, here's why that could be a tricky position to take on this, and get kind of right to the heart of like undermining the thing that he just said. Yeah, I think that the most common response would be exactly that. It would be, I'm going to call that a cognitive response or an argument on the merits, right? And by the way, you might also be a little irritated, right? He's, he's used this word, "Fag." It's not complimentary. So and it's clear, he understands now who transgender people are when he says, don't cut yourself out to be something that you're not, right? So it turns out that even if that word hadn't been totally familiar to him, now it's clear, he does have an opinion about it. So yeah, anything else strike you just watching either what Virginia did or anything else about what the voter said? Nothing else stands out other than just sort of like the surprise of him being able to just sort of express that view. Knowing, as you said, knowing that that's not the view probably that the officer has, and yet still like that, that opportunity was there, right? And it was provided for him to do that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, let's go to the next short chunk that really picks up there. So everybody can hear what Virginia in fact did. Like for me, so I'm gay. So you said like Fag earlier? Yeah, I'm gay. Yeah, I'm gay. Then we're gay. Yeah. Then we're gay. Then we're gay. Kind of make you live. I'm just trying to study, I'm not gay. I'm just trying to study. I'm not gay. If you are, you're going to replace you. Yeah. But why is that? You may be able to take that decision because you have a woman body. Yeah. For me, it wasn't really a decision or a choice. It was like, this is just who I am. And so how I feel is that I love who I love, for who that person is. And then my body and gender, right? It doesn't necessarily match the fact that who I feel on the inside. Like as a woman, or I don't identify as a woman, actually. I think it would be a good answer because I always like to. It's something from the. It's something from the person. You see? You never met anybody who's gay or transgender? Never. Never. My grandfather, my grandmother, they were very much kissed. And they knew. So, oh boy, you might want to be a friend with someone who would hit me. Yeah. So we don't usually. What are you thinking about that chunk? Yeah. There's this moment where he realizes. I've just been saying this. Now I know this about you. And it's like, suddenly this collision is happening where I like realize what this means. And the other is just how immediately open he is to that. Like, despite what he just said, he responds like with real grace to the. I mean, the kind of kind of thing that he's been saying to me. He's saying, "I think this is a great way to get a friend with me." I think that's what he's saying. So, I think that's a great way to get a friend with me. But you know, you know, what I mean by that kind of thing is. I mean, I think it's a great way to get a friend with me. I think that's a great way to get a friend with me. I think it's a great way to get a friend with me. I think that's what I mean by that kind of thing is that he's been saying to me. But it doesn't and that might be the more common response. No, actually this is a very common response. In other words, people have very cruel opinions sometimes. But many fewer people are actually cruel. And even fewer people think that the times they've been cruel are the best times of their life. Usually people recognize they messed up. And so we tend to think, wow, wouldn't cognitive dissonance pose a problem here? But actually, when we have a discussion in the realm of opinion, it's almost impossible to connect and find a path forward. But when we are in talking in the realm of real lived experience, there's a lot of common ground that's apparent immediately. I feel like that's what you're pointing out because you're so right. He's very open. Virginia is very open. And that's because they're no longer discussing his opinion about transgender people. They're really starting to discuss how does he feel about this human being, who's right in front of him, who he recognizes now doesn't identify in some way that fits into the boxes he had before. And yet he has no trouble recognizing that Virginia is a human being. There's a beautiful moment to where he seems to relish the opportunity to be like, oh, this is great. He sort of waves his hand around as if to say that like, all I know is this is an abstract idea. But I don't know like a person who could sort of like put a personality to these identities. And yeah, like this is like a new opportunity for him. Yeah. And I would just say we actually all in our lives have these experiences where our opinions are not actually aligned with our real lived experience. So, you know, most Catholics in the U.S. have good feelings about their religion or at least many of them do. And many of them go to church and are grateful for it. But if you're Catholic, right, you're aware that you're not supposed to use birth control. And yet over 95% of American Catholics do use birth control. And that's because their real lived experience is that an unlimited number of children is actually not going to help them have a good life and raise a family successfully. And so what happens is it isn't that people have to give up Catholicism. They just when they notice the conflict and they really focus on it, they believe their real lived experience more than they believe their opinions. And that's really what's happening here. Yeah. So we don't usually use the word fag. So I'm losing my hair. So just gay or transgender. Yeah. Well, I can tell that when you're saying it, you're not mean you don't say it with like negative or bad feelings. You just say it in my way of being like you just said it. Yeah. Do you remember? So one of the things too that, why I know it's not really a choice for me is like right now I am madly in love with this person. And their name is Lord is and beautiful name and their teacher and the Gordon. I love to show you a picture because you showed me one of yours there. That's my partner in the head over heels. Like I can't even begin to tell you that I want to spend the rest of my life with this person. But that sounds like when you talk that there's a lot of love in your tone too. And one thing about that, love is very, that's a showing. Yeah. 58 years of my life now I have to take a look. I care about it but really take care of it. Thank you. Yeah. How does that make you feel? I feel like God gave me a still love to love a disabled person. I care about it. That resonates a lot with me because I know that I'm going to take care of notice for the rest of my life. Oh man, she would take care of you. I know. Well, we'll take care of each other. For me, these love. What strikes you about that? It does seem like the voter in this case very quickly makes the connection of like, oh, this is not any different from my own life. Like this issue or idea that seemed foreign in the abstract is actually no different from the way anybody is trying to get through the day. Yeah. Yeah. It really, I'm right. In other words, it isn't difficult for him to realize as Virginia tells us a story about their partner, Lord, it reminds him of how he feels about his own wife, who he's been with for 58 years. So yes, this, this is a voter who is an empathetic person actually. And if you think back to when this conversation began and he used the word, "fag," any campaign other than ours would have just left the door at that point. They would have given up on him. And the whole point of deep canvassing is we don't have to give up on people. There's a lot more we can learn. And then sometimes there are people where we're not going to help them reconsider. They're not going to reconsider. But we are our temptation is to give up too soon and assume that when we hear the first negative opinion, that that ruins everything. And it really doesn't. And the antidote to that is us moving to real lived experience for Virginia tells this story, a love story. And then he's thought about how much he loves his wife, a whole lot more than he's ever thought about transgender people. And he's really thought about what does love mean when now, I mean, he was pointing inside the room and you couldn't see. But his wife was very disabled. I don't even know the extent, but very seriously so. And so he actually knows something about love that's, I think we all really hope is true. We want to make it true in terms of how we treat people, which is we're there for better or for worse. And there's always better and worse. Everybody gets to confront this. And when you know that you love somebody and you need them and they need you and you count on them and they count on you. Well, all of a sudden he has a different way of understanding Virginia's life. Right? It, I guess, to him, it looks enough like his life that there he's surprised. And by the way, I think that is the essence of deep canvassing. We're surprised. And the other person surprised. And if I'm not surprised yet, I'm not deep canvassing yet. For me, these laws and including transgender people are about that. They're about how we treat one another. They may not stop who goes into the bathroom or not. Because what I say is that a woman that says to a man, we go to living next to me and we move her away. In terms of like you moving away, is that the, is that is there anything else you can picture happening? Like what do you think the worst would happen? There is only a feeling that one of us does in Colombia because you are for your own, for your own. So I like to be able to, like, I would, that the way I was going to walk. Does it scare you? No. It's scary. The only way is to bath. I think what you're talking to is more of a comfort level than like it's not scary. It's just comfort. But I tell you the truth, be the first time. Yeah. Thank you. That I could ask questions like this and be responded with. Yeah. Well, yeah, that's why we're out here. So recently probably I was mistaken. Yeah. Like so the thing about the comfort is that that's all it is. It's this big. Because since a lot of people don't know someone who's transgender, there's a like a, like a, I'm not even sure what to call it. But you know, just a fear of the unknown, the knowing that like that's what Lord is faces is why it's a big reason why I'm out here today because knowing when my partner, like, like, you're white, right? Like when the people we love are dealing with something that impacts them daily. Yeah. So if you had a vote on this law tomorrow to include transgender people in our non discrimination law, would you vote in favor of including them or vote against including them? In favor? And we have that same scale 0 to 10, where zero is 100% against which number? 10. Okay. And why does that number feel right for you? Why does a 10 feel right? We like, I'm in the middle talking with for everybody. Nice. Yeah. Any thoughts about that? You know, there's it's one thing that strikes me about it is the appreciation. The voter expresses right? And to say like, thank you. Thank you for coming here and allowing me the opportunity to ask questions in this kind of open space. Right? Because potentially that's the thing that squashes change. Is this feeling that like I can't even ask a question about trying to understand something that I haven't thought about before? Yeah. Or are you afraid if you did ask a question or if you were honest, you're going to have an argument. The other person's going to be unkind. That's that's really the biggest barrier to reducing polarization is when people anticipate how the other person's going to treat them poorly. And so the single biggest mistake that you can make if you want to change someone's mind is to demean them or diminish them. And we're to not be curious about them or or or to hurt them. So in a way, a good rule of thumb. If you want a deep canvas is when a voter says something and you disagree with it. Think what Donald Trump would do. Then do the opposite. Okay. Can I ask you in that the clip that we saw was like an abbreviated like there were some edit points in there. So what we saw what we saw was about six minutes, but what is that cut down from like like 20. Yeah, 20, which is incredible because this guy makes it 180 right like like quantifiably by the end of a reasonably quick exchange with a stranger. He's absolutely on the other side. And in a way that feels genuine in a way that doesn't feel like because anyone could say like I'd like to I'd like you to leave. If I just say I agree with you now, will you leave? But he expresses like a confident in genuine change of heart by the end. Yeah, yeah, I whenever we share video or audio online in any digital form, the only way to I know to do that that's appropriate is we go back to the voter and show them the edited conversation and let them tell us we we ask for permission again. Before we share it more widely and when the folks in Miami went back and showed him this, he started to cry. He felt so good about the conversation and about Virginia and about himself. And and that's why you know, it's funny when I read pundits talking about what it's like to deep can. us. The way I know they have never deep canvased is they talk about how anxiety provoking it is and how rotten it's going to feel you have this gigantic burden like Christ with the cross. That is not what this conversation's like. It turns out right, even if the person still disagrees with us at the end. These are actually so much more heartening and hopeful than our expectations. And so the single biggest mistake that we make in politics, and I would say this on the liberal side or progressive side for sure is we think we know someone before we've talked to them and our assumptions about them in fact are so often wrong. We've screwed ourselves. We need more people with us if we don't think Donald Trump's vision for America is a good one. But the only way you have more we have more people with us is if we discover who we have enough common ground with. Yeah, it seems like the reason why people are anxious about or could be anxious about having these conversations is because they're assuming the wrong thing about the person, right? It seems like that's the fundamental miscalibration is like I don't give enough credit to my fellow human beings for being human beings. And I sort of underestimate the common ground that we could find to at least start a conversation. Yeah, I couldn't summarize it better. Yeah, one question I have about this is for obvious reasons, though the perspective you take to this is a more liberal progressive like in that it's like on one side of the political spectrum, which raises the question like how applicable is this as a persuasion strategy generally versus is this particularly well suited to making the case for more progressive social views? Does that make sense? Yeah, I understand your question. And I don't have the full answer because it turns out we're living in a very retrograde time. So what you're describing is a liberal point of view. Not that long ago, even when I was a boy, this would be a conservative point of view. The idea that we ought to treat everybody well. Yeah, I really didn't invent that. It predates me by like five minutes. When Jesus talked about this, when Dr. King talked about this, I mean, we've had a lot of people offer these ideas, but we haven't had a time where fascism was really on the rise. And where a leading candidate for president is openly expressing support for bigotry and cruelty. So yes, I think deep canvassing is going to work a lot better to help people realize that they can be more generous in how they think about people who are not just like them. Yeah. So it seems well suited to prejudice oriented issues, potentially issues about people, whereas what I wonder is like if I have like a real strong take on tax policy is deep canvassing, my go to strategy. Well, I think it depends because if the tax policy has implications for people's real lived experience, then you've got plenty of room to deep canvas, right? In other words, if you were going to just talk about tax policy, you might not find common ground. But if you want to talk about a child care tax credit, what's that really about? It's really about how much do we care about all of our kids? How much do we want to make sure that they're given every chance to be whoever they can be? Because that idea, right, is actually how most people want to proceed. They want things to be good. I bet you want things to be good for Maya, but I bet you want things to be good for children who are not your own children as well. So we haven't explored this enough. Deep canvassing is an underutilized approach. And at this political moment with so much political division, it feels counterintuitive to a lot of people who care about politics. But it might be that the price we have to pay for a democracy is to actually care about the people who aren't just like us as much as we care about the people who are exactly like us. Well, that's great. I think for time, let's go ahead and round things out. If people want to know more about deep canvassing or maybe even get involved, like, where do you direct people who want to know more about this? Sure. Well, if if you're somebody who likes to read, I've posted 17 short pieces on substack. And if you end up including the link for that, that's great. People can go there, look at the different topics, see if one of them interests them. So that's a possibility. There is some other material online. If they want to actually see Virginia talking with the voter, that's available online. If they go watch my TEDx talk so they can find that or you can give the link to that. And then there really are a few groups doing deep canvassing. So for instance, this past weekend, I was in Philadelphia changing the conversation is a group that has active members in New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania throughout the region. And they had their first deep canvas of 2024. And so if you live in Philadelphia or the greater New York area or even in DC, it would be pretty easy for you to join in for their next canvas and get trained. And then you can decide if you wanted to work and canvas in Philadelphia, which is obviously in a swing state, or maybe there's some other application of it you'd want to make. So there, there, I would say the main thing is, if you're interested in learning how to do this, you're going to need training, but just as important as the training is you need to go out and do it pretty much immediately after you're trained because it's actually putting it to use where you're going to get the hang of it. Well, this is great. Thanks so much for taking the time to talk about all this stuff and walking us through that example. I think that was super helpful. So thank you. Welcome. All right. He that'll do it for another episode of opinion science. Big thank you to Dave Fleischer for sharing his story and walking us through deep canvassing. If you want to know more, he has a really great sub stack called Dave's sub stack, which you can find at DaveFlyshore.substack.com. There's a link on the episode webpage. He's written articles like how to start a political conversation without getting into an argument and how to connect with a wider variety of people. Check it out for more about this show. You can head to opinion science podcast.com. Follow the show on various social media sites and subscribe or follow on whatever thing you use to get podcasts into your ears. Also, thank you to the folks who've kicked in a few bucks to cover the regular operating expenses for this show. I'm still a staff of one with no official sponsors. So your help is definitely appreciated. If you want to help the show yourself, you can find a link on the podcast website and another simple thing you could do is leave a review on a site like Apple Podcasts. Okay, I think that's all for now. Thanks for being here and I'll see you in a couple weeks for more opinion science. Bye-bye.